Information Security Protects Business and Customers at Black Friday

November 21, 2018 - Gisele Flores - It Forum365

 

 

 The eighth Brazilian edition of sexta-feira Negra On November 23, consumers from all over the country went shopping to secure products and services at prices well below their market value.

 Whether in physical stores or e-commerce, Black Friday this year should move more than two billion reais in Brazil. But as profits increase, so does the number of cyber attack attempts in this period, with DFNDR Lab forecasting an increase of 600% this year from the same period in 2017.

 The main criminal practice detected during Black Friday is called by phishing experts, where fake pages and offers are created to hijack consumer data, such as credit card information. Fake pages are usually shared on social networks, gaining high viralizing power.

 Some of the harm to consumers is that by completing a purchase on a fake page, in addition to leaving your data with cyber criminals who may use it illegally, you no longer actually purchased the product or service you wanted. But the company from which you theoretically bought will never receive the value, will not know about your purchase and will still have its image damaged in the market.

 

Impact of cyber threats

 The impacts of cyber threats can also hit companies that are not participating directly in the promotions. That's because most consumers make their Black Friday purchases at their workstation. Thus, when receiving or accessing a fake page, for example, in the corporate environment, the company itself runs the risk of being infected by the malicious link. And even using personal computers or smartphones to connect to corporate accounts, employees are still liable to contaminate the company with some malicious file for providing a corporate username and password for remote access.

 Because of all these risks, information security strategies and technologies come into play as an extremely important player in acting against these threats and their creators, who change and find new techniques every day.

 Companies specializing in information security indicate that to avoid falling for such scams, the customer should always be wary of offers sent by messages; from pages accessed by public wifi networks; extremely low-priced and infallible offers; and do research on the credibility of the company you are buying from. A visit to the company's official website or portals such as Reclame Aqui, and the confirmation of the offer in question work very well to combat this type of cyber attack.

 Another very important aspect is that companies have information security software or technologies that can detect and protect their system against malicious phishing links and other threats. Consumers are also advised to install some of these antivirus solutions on their smartphones to prevent them from being directed to malicious pages. The Sonar Shield solution developed by Microservice is capable of detecting and analyzing cyber anomalies in various computer systems.

 Among the features of the product, it is possible to secure environments such as networks, data centers, cloud and endpoints by performing malware protection, vulnerability analysis, monitoring, behavior analysis and phishing simulation to measure user maturity. “Investments in information security technology are meant to mitigate failures and risks, but it can never be said that security vulnerabilities and breaches will be 100% eliminated.

 Talking about information security also involves physical data, such as printed documents, and people, who when not well educated, can be the main gateway to an attack, especially by receiving phishings. That's why investing in multiple layers of technology, as well as continually working on user awareness, is critical to the security of organizations of all sizes, ”says André Junges, Microservice Director of Marketing and Sales.